Instructions For Editors In Chief

Instructions For Editors-In-Chief

Essentially the same as the Instructions For Associate Editors, except you have the power to approve edits and new sequences so that they become a permanent part of the OEIS.

"War and Peace" submissions

• If someone has not produced a satisfactory submission in a month, with a huge number of edits, and with Pink Box comments longer than "War and Peace", then reject it and recycle the A-number.

• It is inconsiderate of people to take up so much time and effort from the editors. Rejecting it is the kindest thing to do.

• If you think the sequence has some merit, suggest they wait a couple of weeks, and then resubmit a clean version.

• I recently rejected a submission that had been going back and forth with the editors for 2 months, that had over 125 edits, with Pink Box comments longer than a roll of toilet paper.

• If someone can't produce a decent submission in a reasonable time, they are just wasting our time.

How to delete or reject a sequence and recycle the A-number

• There are many reasons for this. A sequence may turn out to be a duplicate of an existing sequence (this often happens after an error has been corrected), or the editors may decide it is not appropriate for the OEIS, or the author may withdraw it.

• The following also applies to sequences that are being rejected from the Submissions stack. Even if the sequence has only been submitted for a few minutes, we want a record of its rejection.

• Any editor in chief can delete a sequence and recycle the A-number. But proceed with great caution! Here is what you do.

• Go to the sequence and click Edit, then click Edit Internal Format. Replace all the lines with a single line saying

%K recycled

and save the changes.

• Then there are two or three other important things you must do.

• Go to the sequence, and click the "refs" tab. This shows any existing sequence that refers to that sequence, and you must go through them and edit them. Either delete the cross-reference to the dead sequence, or - if it was deleted because it was a duplicate - update the cross-reference.

• Then go to the Deleted Sequences page on the OEIS wiki, https://oeis.org/wiki/Deleted_sequences, and make an entry giving the A-number that was deleted, the author's name, the reason it was deleted (e.g. "withdrawn" or "NOGI: Not of General Interest"), and sign it with four tildes as usual. There are a great many examples to guide you. It is important that we have a record of the deletion.

• If there was a b-file, the system handles it automatically (you will see a note in the history). It is no longer necessary to ask the admins to remove it.